Calculating alimony with Robert DeNiro’s dinero is what is turning up the heat in his divorce. His wife, Grace Hightower, is seeking temporary alimony and has asked for an emergency order to raise her monthly credit card limit from $50,000 to $100,000 – which De Niro halved.

Raging Bull?

In their response, De Niro’s lawyers claimed that the actor’s financial status had been significantly damaged by Covid-19 after restaurants Nobu and Greenwich Hotel, which he owns stakes in, were forced to close.

The judge was told that, as well as sushi restaurant Nobu losing $4.87m between April and May, De Niro had been forced to borrow from business partners to pay investors ($500,000) because “he doesn’t have the cash”.

The actor’s lawyers said: “He is going to be lucky if he makes $7.5m this year,” adding that he would likely make $2.5m in 2020 and 2021!

Addressing Hightower, they said: “These people, in spite of his robust earnings, have always spent more than he has earned so this 76-year-old robust man couldn’t retire even if he wanted to because he can’t afford to keep up with his lifestyle expense”.

Hightower’s lawyer is calling it raging bull: “I’m not a believer that a man who has an admitted worth of $500m and makes $30m a year, all of a sudden in March he needs to cut down by 50% and ban her from the house.

Florida Alimony

I’ve written about subject of alimony in Florida. In every Florida dissolution of marriage case, the court can grant alimony to either party – husband or wife.

Not many people realize there are several types of alimony in Florida: bridge-the-gap, rehabilitative, durational, or permanent alimony.

Florida courts can also award a combination of alimony types in a divorce. Alimony awards are normally paid in periodic payments, but sometimes the payments can be in a lump sum or both lump sum and periodic payments.

In determining whether to award alimony or not, the court has to first make a determination as to whether a wife or a husband, has an actual need for alimony, and whether the other party has the ability to pay alimony.

As DeNiro’s wife is discovering, proving the ability to pay is one of the central issues in her divorce right now because DeNiro’s income, it is claimed, dropped significantly due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Typically, courts consider any type of earned income or compensation — that is, income resulting from employment or other efforts — along with recurring passive income, such as dividends on your investments, in establishing the amount of support you will be responsible to pay.

In Florida, once a court determines there is a need and the income available to pay alimony – sometimes referred to as the ability to pay alimony – it has to decide the proper type and amount of alimony. In doing so, the court considers several factors, some of which can include:

• The standard of living established during the marriage.
• The duration of the marriage.
• The age and the physical and emotional condition of each party.
• The financial resources of each party, including the nonmarital and the marital assets and liabilities distributed to each.
• The earning capacities, educational levels, vocational skills, and employability of the parties and, when applicable, the time necessary for either party to acquire sufficient education or training to enable such party to find appropriate.

But, after establishing Hightower’s need for alimony, how much dinero is there to determine De Niro’s ability to pay?

Analyze This…

The Supreme Court justice ruled that De Niro should keep the lower credit card limit while paying Hightower $75,000 to find a summer home for their children. De Niro filed from divorce from Hightower in 2018.

Robert De Niro’s attorneys said that the actor’s finances have taken a huge hit over the course of the coronavirus pandemic. The actor is battling a divorce case against Grace Hightower, his ex-wife who he was with for 21 years, in Manhattan Supreme Court.

De Niro appeared via Skype at an emergency hearing, which was called after De Niro cut Hightower’s American Express credit card limit from $100,000 to $50,000 a month.

According to the Daily Mail, Hightower’s lawyer told the judge that she and her two children with De Niro, Harvey (8) and Elliot (21), had been banned from his New York compound, which is where De Niro has been staying during the pandemic.

However, De Niro’s lawyer, Caroline Krauss, reportedly told the judge that De Niro was forced to make this cut to Hightower’s credit card limit because his finances have been so badly affected by the pandemic.

Krauss told the judge that Nobu and The Greenwich Hotel, the restaurant chain and hotel that De Niro owns, have both been badly hit by the pandemic as they have been closed or partially closed for months with next to no income.

Krauss said that the 2004 prenuptial agreement between De Niro and Hightower means that De Niro is only required to pay $1 million a year to Hightower as long as he is making at least $15 million a year. The terms, Krauss said, state that if his income falls, hers will proportionately fall too.

Krauss said that the money De Niro has earned from last year’s “The Irishman” has largely already been paid out, meaning he will only receive $2.5 million this year.

“These people, in spite of his robust earnings, have always spent more than he has earned so this 76-year-old robust man couldn’t retire even if he wanted to because he can’t afford to keep up with his lifestyle expense.

In response, Page Six reported that Hightower’s lawyer, Kevin McDonough, told the judge: “Mr. De Niro has used the COVID pandemic, my words would be, to stick it to his wife financially.

“I’m not a believer that a man who has an admitted worth of $500 million and makes $30 million a year, all of a sudden in March he needs to cut down [spousal support] by 50 percent and ban her from the house.”

McDonough said that “the idea that Mr. De Niro is tightening his belt is nonsense.” The judge issued a temporary ruling that the credit card limit is kept at $50,000 a month, but that De Niro pays Hightower a $75,000 lump sum so she can find a summer home for her and their two children, while De Niro stays in his compound with his other three children.

De Niro and Hightower were married in 1997 but filed for divorce two years later. However, their divorce never finalized, and they patched things up and renewed their vows in 2004. They officially separated in 2018.

The Insider article is here.

Photo credit: David Shankbone – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0